


clear the clouds

by peachyteabuck



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Fluff, kittens as therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25115959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachyteabuck/pseuds/peachyteabuck
Summary: after weeks of bucky feeling down, natasha knows exactly who to call to make him feel better
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 64





	clear the clouds

**Author's Note:**

> this is a birthday present for the effervescent @m00nlightdelights, who asked for bucky barnes interacting with kittens. happy birthday babe!

Natasha was the one who called you – asking something many dream for but very few get to experience. It’s hard to transport that many tiny, wriggling animals across town and very few are willing to pay the exorbitant, arbitrary amount of money you had made some intern put on the website after the twentieth call asking about the particular service.

People, apparently, _really_ want to rent a bunch of kittens for several different types of events – finals weeks at universities and rich high schools, bat and bar mitzvahs, once even a wedding. Why those event coordinators can’t rent service animals is beyond you, and why they always expect you to do these things for free is also a mystery.

No matter _why_ those people wanted your kittens, you closed the service except for incredibly rare cases.

One of those incredibly rare cases, per the usual path of your life, involved Natasha Romanoff.

You owed her a favor from a few years back, when she made sure an ex-boyfriend of yours…well, for legal purposes you can’t talk about it, but Natasha made sure he never bothered you or your friends ever again.

Natasha’s got enough tact not to bring the year-long ordeal up – just said she wanted to “cash in” on your side of the bargain. You sighed into the office landline when she told you she was calling for her favor, the exhale so deep it was still audible despite the barking and scratching and the menagerie of other noises.

It takes you a second to collect yourself, to shove the memories back into that little box your therapist had you build and then tuck into the back of your brain.

Despite not being able to see her face, you can tell she’s frowning and has furrowed her brow. “You good?”

You nodded, then remembered how phones work. “Yeah,” you let out a small sigh. “Yeah, I’m fine. You want the kittens at Avengers Towers this weekend for a few hours to help that friend of yours-“

“ _Bucky_ ,” Natasha interrupts you. “His name is Bucky. And you should go out with him.”

Despite still knowing how phone works, you roll your eyes. “Didn’t you just say he spent the last week bedridden because of depression. It doesn’t exactly sound like he’s in the right state of mind for a relationship.”

Your friend scoffs into the phone, shutting what you think is a thick book for dramatic audial effect. “And you spend fifteen hours a day at your shelter because it gives you an excuse not to see people. I don’t need you to marry him, I’m saying maybe a coffee date would be good for you.”

There’s a pause where you search for a sarcastic response, but Natasha beats you to it.

“Actually, no,” she says, voice dripping with a lovable dryness you can’t help but admire. “It _will_ be good for both of you.”

Another pause while you recalculate your sarcastic response cortex. After a deeply silent thirty seconds, you give up.

“Fine,” you acquiesce. “But you and Wanda are helping me _and_ you’re buying me lunch for that day _and_ you’re helping me during adoption day at the museum next month.”

Somehow, you can hear Natasha’s wide and triumphant smile. “You got it, kid.”

And with that, you hang up before falling back in your office chair. You swear, that woman could convince you to do anything.

 _Fucking spies_ , you think before putting the event in the shelter’s e-calendar.

The day arrives both too quickly and not quickly enough – your brain caught between something akin to “existential dread” and “oh my God my friend is trying to set me up with her friend and what if it doesn’t work but what if it _does_ ” the entire week before the planned event. During the night before you down quadruple your normal dose of melatonin to fall asleep after spending _three entire hours_ trying on all your clothes to plan the right outfit (in the end, you chose an unusually nice pair of leggings and a plan sweater along with boots cute enough to fool a man into thinking they’re fancy while still protecting your feet from the end-stage winter air outside.

(Also, the leggings and sweater are the easiest things to lint roll kitten fur off of you for, say, a date at an upscale coffee shop you normally wouldn’t even _think_ of going to, but that’s nobody’s business and you totally one hundred percent did not think about that when trying the outfit on.)

You meet Natasha and Wanda at the shelter the next morning, you getting there before them to gather the necessary supplies from the back. Despite them promising to help you load your car with kittens and kitten-adjacent items, you still didn’t want either of them messing with the precious organization system you’d spent years perfecting (and years training interns and vet techs how to abide by it).

Luckily, with your precautions and time management – and despite Wanda’s need to kiss every kitten ( _yes, every kitten)_ as they were loaded into crates – you arrive at the infamous Stark Tower right on time.

Set up of the whole thing doesn’t take long, Natasha successfully leading the way through the maze of which is the expansive building. You pass a few people you recognize from Natasha’s stories and the news, and a few others who you don’t but still smile as they pass (whether they were just being nice or smiling at the kittens in the crates you were holding, you refused to decide).

It takes a few elevator rides, but eventually you get to the desires floor and room – Wanda knocking on the door after setting her Ikea bag of playpen supplies on the carpeted floor.

A response is nearly immediate. “Go away!” a gruff voice calls, muffled by the thick walls.

Natasha and Wanda both roll their eyes. “Shut up and open the door!” the former replies.

There’s no verbal response, but you do hear shuffling before the door opens to reveal a figure more brick house than man. His hair is messy, sweatshirt a size too large and solid black but with jeans that fit perfectly. His boots – much thicker and blacker than yours – are dirty.

“What do you want?” he grumbles.

Natasha remains unphased by the man’s demeanor. “We have kittens. Now move out of my way so we can set all this shit up and you can pet some cute animals.”

Bucky gives her a _look_ and rolls his eyes, but steps asides and holds the door open for the three of you nonetheless.

Twenty minutes later, Bucky found in the middle of the four-foot wide pen, bewildered. He’s done a lot of things in his life, many of which would be impossible for (nearly) anyone else to accomplish. He speaks thirty languages (plus Morse code and ten variations of sign language), he’s hunted bears with his bare hands, he’s survived Russian winters and summers in the Amazon rainforest.

Yet, somehow, the thing that stunts him beyond reproach is a small play pen filled with about forty tiny, six-week old kittens that are all their own form of chaotic. Bucky doesn’t know where to look, let alone how to grab the ones that catch his eye. He’s terrified of crushing them like bug caught under a hardcover book, of breaking their tiny ribs or tiny legs or tiny necks.

He watched you intensely when you and Natasha and Wanda pulled them out of their crates, watching how you held them and which one allowed you to give them kisses and which one chased after the strands in Natasha’s ponytail. He noticed which ones curled up in small spheres in the corners of the pen, which ones immediately bopped about, which ones immediately sought out the bottle of formula you’d prepared and which ones nibbled at the liquidy wet food that had been scooped into a neon blue bowl.

Each tiny animal was different, and it amazed him.

There was this one cat, a fluffy little white one with one ear and splotches of buttery yellow seems the boldest, eyeing Bucky as if the man was this small cat’s Everest. The floral collar (one of those break-away ones, you had told him, meant to keep the kittens from getting hurt but allowing the rescuers to identify them by name and rescue identification number) has a small nameplate – a gold one – with “Squirt” etched into the metal.

“ _Squirt_ ,” Bucky repeats under his breath. “Nice to meet you, little guy.”

The cat gives him a small, pterodactyl-like scream in response, as if the small animal is too young to speak in any other tone but “loud.”

“HELLO LARGE CAT,” he imagines the cat saying. “HELLO, I AM A SMALLER CAT. DO YOU WISH TO BE CLIMBED?”

Bucky smiles at the imagined conversation, allowing the brave creature to dig its tiny claws into the leg of his jeans just above his socked feet (he took off his boots when he arrived in the room, as per your request), the start to his magnificent journey.

“I do not mind being climbed,” the man answers out loud. For once, he doesn’t take in the entire room’s emotions and reactions before he says something – he just _talks_ , even if that freedom from paranoia is only allowing him to speak to someone (or thing) that can’t talk back.

Squirt gets to Bucky’s knee before screeching once more, just as tenacious as when he was on the floor. “THIS IS MUCH HARDER THAN I EXPECTED,” is all Squirt says.

Bucky laughs, ignoring the several other kittens who are trying to claw up Bucky’s metal arm – each unsuccessful but determined to continue to try. “I’m a lot bigger than you realized, huh?”

Squirt takes a few more wobbly steps, tail high in the air, before looking to Bucky for guidance as the tiny creature stands on his thigh. “I WOULD LIKE SOME HELP, PLEASE,” Bucky interprets from the screeches.

He laughs, not moving. Another kitten, this time an equally tiny short-haired black cat named “Foosball” attempts to follow in Squirt’s literal and metaphorical footsteps, but gives up when she gets to Bucky’s knees. This, too, makes him let out a chuckle. “Don’t worry, kid. You’re doing _just_ fine.”

You watch Bucky’s interactions with the kittens intensely – telling yourself you just need to make sure he doesn’t hurt them accidentally. In truth, he was handling them the best you’d seen anyone outside your shelter in a long time – gentle, firm, attentive. His pseudo-conversations warm your heart, and the only thing that breaks your concentration is one of the larger kittens walking up to the barrier of the pen to scream at you from inside her prison that she was hungry. Natasha and Wanda had long left, citing some bureaucratic problem that was probably bullshit but, regardless of accuracy, left you and Bucky alone.

“What does she want?” the man asks, body still frozen as Squirt climbs his chest.

“Butterfly wants to eat,” you reply while you grab one of the syringes with formula.

“Why can’t she eat from the bowl of food?” he asks. It’s not accusatory, just curious. It’s sweet, extremely so, and makes you realize that Natasha was right – this _is_ good for him.

“At six weeks, most kittens are weened from their mothers or,” you pick Butterfly up and hold her against you as she suckles at the plastic nozzle. “In this case, syringes. But sometimes it just takes a little longer.”

Bucky _hmms_ , turning his attention back to the kittens before he speaks again. “Do you want to get coffee?”

You swallow, looking at him look at Squirt. “Like…with you?”

Bucky nods as he sits up, the brave kitten now on his shoulder and several others vying for his attention. “I, uh,” he swallows. “Yeah. Coffee. With me. Like a, uh, a date. With me. Where we get coffee.”

You giggle a little, both at his flustered speech and at Butterfly’s post-feeding tiredness. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Cool,” is all Bucky replies, the both of you now focused back on the kittens.

 _Dammit_ , you think. _Natasha was right **again**_ **.**


End file.
